Richemont revealed the two key appointments on Tuesday within hours of each other, Louis Ferla CEO of Cartier and Catherine Rénier CEO of Van Cleef and Arpels.

Ferla, currently head of Vacheron Constantin, will succeed Cyrille Vigneron as CEO of Cartier. Rénier, currently CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre, will succeed Nicolas Bos, now CEO of Richemont, at the head of Van Cleef and Arpels.

The appointments come in a year of leadership change for Richemont, whose chairman and founder Johann Rupert is planning succession as a generation of senior executives reaches retirement age.

At Richemont, employees tend to retire between the ages of 63 and 65, although Rupert often likes to keep some as advisors or in one-off positions. Ferla, who will be 49 this year, is part of the new generation of top managers.

Rénier, another new generation leader, had built a strong management team and a clear and differentiated positioning for Jaeger-LeCoultre. Let’s hope that when we write to him he will be polite enough to respond to us in opposition to Vigneron.